The Ultimate Odyssey
by Naomi Sisko
Summary: Four Treks and four Trekkies collide in this hilarious adventure orchestrated by Q.
1. 1

_***Disclaimer: Star Trek and all its characters and spaceships and stuff like that are copyright of Paramount. Profiting from this story is illegal! Qor, Yugin, and Anja are my characters; please do not use without permission. Hannah, Frau, Lizzie, and David are based on real life people and used with permission.***_   
  
  


**The Ultimate Odyssey**

  
  
  


> > _by Naomi Sisko_
>> 
>> PROLOGUE

  
There is a story which every Trekker is destined to write, whether great or small it doesn't matter. Sometimes he or she writes more than one, but for Anja it was just the one. This one.

Then why am I recording it now, you ask? You see, Anja did not write down the whole story, only the smallest part of it, as you will soon discover. I find it my duty to add the pieces she left out, so you will know exactly how everything came to be.

It all happened once upon a time....

As Anja sat typing her once-in-a-lifetime story, someone else watched. Intrigued by her story line and needful of something to do, that someone decided that her plot should come to be. Across barriers of time and space, he read and was pleased.

He had been listening to the symphony of the stars, as he flew through a rainbowed nebula, bordered by streams of deep space wind currents. Now he sought the simple pleasure of intervening with human events, again.

"I think I shall create a temporal anomaly today," he mused, inspired. With a wave of his hand, Q whisked off toward his destination.   
  


> > CHAPTER ONE

  
Anja skipped down the damp sidewalk, her finished manuscript in her book bag. She loved mornings like these, where the clouds hid the sun just enough for her to look up into the sky without hurting her eyes. If only she didn't have to go to school! But to school she went, keeping her eyes trained ahead of her, occasionally glancing upward. It was on one such glance that she caught sight of a flash of light, almost like a collapsing star. What was it? Her curiosity peaked, she strolled on pondering until she reached school, making a trip to her locker to drop off her coat and book bag before heading to first period.

Slamming her books on her desk, Anja turned to a friend. "Good morning," she greeted Hannah. "Guess what?"

Hannah looked up from the novel she was reading. "What?"

"I finished my 'Star Trek' book."

Hannah frowned. "The one you were reading?"

"No. The one I was writing!"

"Oh. Can I see it?"

Anja handed the crisp printouts to Hannah, who leafed through them, every once in a while stopping to read a sentence.

"This looks good," said Hannah. "Can I borrow it to read?"

"Sure."

The bell rang, and the students hurried to their seats. The German teacher, a lady who had immigrated from Hungary, finished some business up front and addressed the class.

"OK, class, take out your homevork." Elizabeth Boggess, known to her students as "Frau," had such a heavy accent that one might think it was actually something that was stuck in her throat. After checking off everyone's homework, she instructed, "turn to auf Seite hundert und dreissig. Today ve are going to talk about irregular werbs."

"Frau, I forgot my book in my locker," whined one of the students.

"Yeah, me too," complained another, stalling. Frau was one of those teachers the kids loved to torment. She didn't pay attention, though, and picked up a piece of chalk and began conjugating verbs on the chalkboard.

Anja's eyes grew wide as Frau was enveloped in a great flash of light, then disappeared. Hannah frantically dashed to the front of the room in a desperate attempt to save her favorite teacher, but soon followed. Then Anja's own vision was obscured by total brightness. She squeezed her eyes shut, but the flimsy protection of her eyelids did no good. Then the light disappeared, and she was left in some very dark place. Once her eyes adjusted to the dimness, she studied her surroundings and shivered. Something seemed very, very familiar. Suddenly, she knew. Spotting Frau and Hannah, she dashed over to them.

"Vhere are we?" Frau queried, knotted eyebrows contorting her smallish face.

"I'll explain that later," blurted Anja quickly. "We have to get out of here."

"Not so fast," grumbled a menacing voice from a darkened corridor.

Hannah spoke up. "I have a funny feeling about this."

Frau frowned, staring at something. "Speaking of funny, look at them."

Two Ferengi made their way out of the darkness. "Oh, my..." Hannah said, hiding her face in her hands in a half laugh, half sob.

"Vell, who are they?"

"We need to go," insisted Anja, urgently.

"They're Ferengi. From 'Star Trek,'" explained Hannah.

"I thought that vas science fiction."

"It is . . . er . . . was."

"What are you doing here?" the lead Ferengi asked.

Anja sighed. "Look. We'll get out of here the same way we came, and you won't have to worry about us. But only if we _hurry_." She grabbed Frau and Hannah by the hand and pulled them toward the opening of the temporal fissure that had trapped them.

"Computer, activate force field at 10.1293," the second Ferengi commanded. Anja, Hannah, and Frau, where were all running at that point, bounced off the invisible wall, thrown back into the corridor.

"No. I think you'll stay. I want to know how you transported through our shields. Maybe we could come up with an agreement. One that would be very . . ." he paused, as if searching for the right word . . ."profitable."   
  


Ben Sisko rolled his eyes. Quark had done it again. This time, instead of using the computer terminal for a little commercial, he had programmed a brochure option for the screen. Odo would soon deal with it. Sisko could face Quark some other time, if the Ferengi lived beyond the changeling's interrogation. Odo became rather fed up by the tiniest things these days.

"Captain." Dax's voice came over the comm system. "The _Enterprise_ is ready to dock."

"Acknowledged," replied Sisko, turning over the thought of meeting Captain Picard, once Locutus of Borg, the entity responsible for his wife's death, again. His throat tightened a little, but all other traces of bitterness were gone. Perhaps he and the Captain could settle their differences this time around.

He lifted himself from his chair and left his office, trekking through the now lively corridors of Deep Space Nine, so different from the cold, heartless Cardassian war base it had once been. It wasn't until the airlock rolled open that he got some sense of the calculated militarism the station once served.

Captain Picard and company strode out of the airlock, joining Sisko and Kira, smiling uncharacteristically as Captain Sisko stood tensely, attempting to draw from her peace and confidence. Thus, his own smile came naturally, relieving his apprehension.

"Captain Picard," he greeted. "Welcome. I trust you will enjoy your shore leave. We have the supplies you requested in Cargo Bay Three."

Picard mirrored Sisko's hopeful smile, following him down the corridor.


	2. 2

> > CHAPTER TWO

"Let them go."

"What!?" Qor was incredulous.

Q frowned. "I can't have you go botching up my plans, you know. Your reward will come soon enough." He crossed the shipboard office to a shelf filled with knickknacks, and fiddled with a few.

Yugin, the elder Ferengi, retorted, "What would you have us do, then?"

"Nothing. I'll call you when I need you." Q disappeared in a flash of light.

"No manners at all," Qor muttered. Yugin shot him a piercing glance, and the young Ferengi was silenced.

"Do as he said."

Qor quenched his protest before it could be born. "Yes, Yugin," he assented quietly and returned to the holding cell where the prisoners were kept.   
  


Quark called the brochure option to the screen and entered the code for the secret communications program encoded in it, a delicate feat of programming he was proud of. Well, at least Rom was.

"My initial plan has failed. I'm sending the spies your way." Yugin's message came through immediately, surprising Quark, for Yugin seldom failed at any endeavor. He had contacted Quark about the strange appearance of the spies aboard his ship, since Quark was an old friend and a close-by backup if anything went sour. And even though these spies were only a couple of children and an elderly woman, they had managed to outdo the shrewd Ferengi. How? He asked Yugin the same question.

"It's the stupid Q!"

"The Q? Why would the Q be interested in them?" Quark was puzzled.

"I don't know! That's why I'm asking you to keep an eye on them while they're aboard Deep Space Nine. I want you to find out why they were on my ship. I'm sending you their holos so you'll know who to look for. Good luck."

The transmission faded.

From behind Quark came the sound of someone clearing their throat, utterly sarcastic, yet so cringingly serious that it could only be one person. Quark turned around to come face to face with Odo.

"Constable!" he exclaimed in mock innocence.

"Quark," returned Odo, not fooled.

"Just how long have you been standing there?" ventured Quark, suspicious.

"Long enough to know that you're up to something. And that your 'brochure option' is really a covert communications signal. I was going to ask you to remove it anyway, but now I have a better reason."

Quark, ready with a rebuttal, decided against it and let his hand, posed in the air, fall to the counter in defeat as the changeling left without a second's glance back. Odo had done it again.   
  


"So you're saying we're inside your book?" Hannah paced, trying to cast off the shock at their situation, still convinced that everything, this small, dark, cubic room the Ferengi had left them in, the entire starship, the Ferengi themselves, was a dream.

"So to speak. I didn't actually write us into the book. The temporal anomaly we're trapped in is the same one I wrote about. And those two Ferengi are in my book. I got a look out of a window on the way to this cell. We're docked at Deep Space Nine, the space station where my book mainly takes place." Pushing a handful of red hair over her shoulder, Anja found that she sounded calm, even through her disbelief.

"Oh, my," intoned Frau, who, not herself a Trekker, but knowing an impossibility when she saw one, had been in a daze ever since their capture. She leaned back against a hard, gray wall, her gaze sweeping from side to side as if she expected answers to appear from thin air.

"So, how do we get out?" asked Hannah, her voice edged with nervousness.

"Well," Anja began, "We're too late to go back through the temporal fissure we got here by. I'd say our only chance now is to go through the wormhole."

"The wormhole?" repeated Hannah. "But the wormhole leads to the Gamma Quadrant, not home!"

"That's where this temporal anomaly comes in. In my book, the wormhole went through a flux that made it temporally unstable. It, basically, became a time portal."

Frau shook her head. "It sounds too complicated to me."

Hannah pressed the palms of her hands to her temples. "That's why 'Star Trek' is fiction, and none of this time frolicking can convince me otherwise."

Anja pursed her lips in defiance but remained silent.

Suddenly, the door to their cell slid open, and the second Ferengi stepped in. "Follow me," was all he said, leading the way into the corridor.   
  


Determined to be in the lead, Anja marched down the corridor the Ferengi had left them in, feeling somehow responsible for their situation, yet excited. She wanted to find Captain Sisko, Major Kira, and the rest of the cast of DS9 and ask for their autographs, this urge a result of a lifetime of die-hard Trekkieness.

In the habitat ring after turning off a corridor leading from the docking port, Anja headed for the Promenade. She didn't know what she'd do once she got there, but it seemed the place to find out.

Behind her, Frau conversed with Hannah, who had taken on the job of explaining all the technicalities of "Star Trek" to Frau.

"And Quark and Odo don't get along," Hannah stated.

"Who are they?" Frau asked.

"Well, Quark is a Ferengi. They're the aliens with the big ears like we saw. Odo is a shapeshifter. He can change into just about anything. He hasn't perfected the human form, though, so he looks a little like he's made out of clay."

Frau frowned. "Okay."

Hannah continued. "This station is near a wormhole that leads to the Gamma Quadrant. We're in the Alpha Quadrant." She paused. "Anja, do you know about what year this is?"

"About 2375."

"Yes, about 2375 . . ."

Anja let Hannah's voice fade out as they neared the Promenade, where Starfleet officers and space travelers of all different races mingled among the many shops and eating establishments the station had to offer. It was impossible not to want to be a part of this new civilization; it had so much to offer. She worked her way through the crowd and soon found herself at Quark's, turning to find that Frau and Hannah had followed her.

"Why don't we sit down for a bit?" she suggested. Her companions agreed, and they chose a table at the center of the establishment.

Soon, a waiter arrived to take their order. The edge of Anja's lips curved upward in a smile as she remembered something Quark had said in the Deep Space Nine episode "The Way of the Warrior." "I'll take a root beer," she said. Not knowing what to do, Hannah and Frau ordered the same. The waiter left to get their drinks.

"Anja," Hannah said, "do you know what's going on? I mean, you said it was your book . . ." her voice trailed off.

"Let's just say it's like I'm in the middle of an episode I've seen a hundred times, but in the part of the station they don't show on TV." Anja searched for the words. "I know what's going to happen, but . . . It's a situation I used to imagine myself in, but I never thought would happen. To put it plainly, I'm just about as lost as you."

"As lost as me?" Frau wasn't fooled. She shook her head again, though she was beginning to accept the situation.

The waiter returned with their root beers. As Anja gazed at the bubbling brown liquid, she realized how thirsty she was. She lifted her glass to her mouth, savoring the feeling of the cool wetness sliding down her throat.

She set the glass on the table and looked at Frau and Hannah. "We need to come up with a plan," she said.

"A plan? For vhat?" Frau wondered again at all this.

Anja took a sip of root beer, then explained, "Tomorrow at 1700 hours all the alarms on the station will go off. Captain Sisko and Captain Picard will both notice . . ."

"Captain Picard is here, too?" Hannah asked.

"Yes. Anyway," Anja continued, "they will notice that the wormhole has dilated. They will want to know why, and eventually their curiosity will lead them to send the _Defiant_ through the wormhole. I want to have gained Captain Sisko's favor before then. I want to be on that ship."

"Vhy? Aren't you happy here?" asked Frau.

Anja shook her head. "It isn't a matter of being happy. In my book, three people from our time were sent through the fissure. They were on the _Defiant_ when it went through the wormhole. And they saved the lives of each and every crewmember. Well, I've been looking for them ever since we got here. According to my book, they should be here, now, at Quark's." Anja paused. "They're not. We have to go on the _Defiant_ because we are those three people. We have to save the _Defiant_."


	3. 3

> > CHAPTER THREE

  
"What?" Hannah practically screamed. The idea that she would have to save someone's life scared her. Her best way out was denial; it had been the easiest so far. But her conscience told her that she would go, if need be, and risk her own life to save those people.

"We have to go. The longer we wait, the less chance we have of making it." Anja set her jaw against her own fears and stood up.

"I'm vith you," said Frau, and stood also. Hannah nodded and followed their example.

Anja realized that Frau and Hannah were counting on her to lead the way, so she looked around to get her bearings and headed toward a computer panel. "Computer, locate Captain Sisko."

"Captain Sisko is right behind you," came a voice, much deeper than the computer's, from a few paces behind Anja.

"Captain!" she said, spinning around. Sure enough, there was Benjamin Sisko, looking exactly as he had on "Star Trek."

"Now, what did you want to see me about?" The Captain had a glint of fun in his eyes; he didn't expect anything at all serious.

"Captain," Anja began, suddenly at a loss for words. "I . . . uh, my friends and I have come to the station under the most unusual circumstances."

The Captain was smiling now. Anja felt her face turn red. Evidently, he thought he had heard all of the "unusual circumstances" there were to hear. He was mocking her. She decided to be blunt. "We've come from the twentieth century through a temporal fissure. Captain, I think you will find this strange, us being from the past and knowing your future, but something's going to happen to the wormhole tomorrow and we think, well . . . we can help." Anja saw the Captain's expression grow grim as she stammered out that last statement.

"Follow me," said the Captain, and motioned at Anja and her companions.

He led them through a maze of corridors Anja could only barely recognize, but she was able to deduce that they were headed for Ops, or more likely, Captain Sisko's office. Her suspicions were confirmed when they reached their destination, walking through Ops to reach the office.

Once inside, Captain Sisko turned to face the three time travelers from behind his desk. "Now tell me again what you were saying."

Anja repeated the story, adding how they were captured by the Ferengi and then released. She didn't add that events were beginning to happen as they had in her book. She left the reason she knew how the wormhole would phase into a time warp unrevealed.

Captain Sisko mulled over what she had said for a few minutes. "Your friends," he finally stated. "They're from the twentieth century, and they know about this, too?"

Anja glanced at Frau and Hannah, who had remained silent throughout the whole conversation. "Yes, they are, and they do." She turned her head again to face Sisko. She wasn't sure whether or not he believed anything she had said, but she was sure that he didn't trust her completely. She hadn't expected him to.

"You've gotten here only today," he said. "You need someplace to stay." He pushed a button on his desk and said, "Ensign Darvey, report to my office."

The man, who had probably been just outside at Ops, stepped inside the door. "Sir," he greeted, and waited for instructions.

"Mister Darvey, escort these people to one of our guest quarters. Notify me as to where you put them."

Darvey motioned for Anja, Hannah, and Frau to follow him. As they left, the Captain said, "I'll keep an eye out for what you told me." The doors closed behind them.   
  


Quark mulled over what he had heard, wondering if he should tell Yugin at all. Information this intriguing was to be bought at a high price. Imagine: knowing the future! The girl Anja had said that events were proceeding as she had written in her book, which meant that if he could somehow capture her, she would be able to tell him what would happen next. The other two were merely tokens. They were mindboggled by the thought of time travel in and of itself, although the girl Hannah did seem to know a little.

But Quark had heard a piece of the future already, and it had promise. He would see that he would be on the _Defiant_ also. After more consideration, Quark decided that he should tell Yugin some, but not all, of the information he had gathered. He typed in the access code to his personal computer but remembered that Odo had removed his secret comm link. He would have to pay Yugin a visit in person. He put a reliable employee in charge of the bar until his return.

Once he reached the airlock where Yugin's ship, the _Greed_, was docked, he typed in his access code and strode through the airlock as the bulkheads rolled away. He found his way through the dimly lit corridors to Yugin's office and activated the door chime. Soon the doors opened to reveal Yugin sitting at his desk.

Quark stepped into the room and greeted, "Yugin, my friend."

Yugin's shrewd Ferengi face showed a small smile. "Quark. I hope you've come with information, because if you haven't, I have more important things to do than to waste my time talking with you."

So much for being old friends, Quark thought. "I do have some information for you. Your spies aren't really spies at all, merely misfortuned time travelers from the twentieth century. If you still want them, though, they're going to be on the _Defiant_ tomorrow as it makes a trip through the wormhole. I have a feeling they might know a little more than they're letting on."

Yugin tapped his fingers together. "Yes. The far side of the wormhole would be an inconspicuous sort of place to hijack a ship."

"Hijack? The _Defiant_?" Quark was surprised at such a foolhardy plan.

"Now, Quark," Yugin chided, "you forget the capabilities of this ship. I'm not your normal weak Ferengi."

With a glare, Quark assented. Yugin had fared well in both the pirating and smuggling circles. Perhaps it was not such a good idea to hitchhike aboard the _Defiant_ after all. As Quark turned to leave, he took one final glance at the smug Ferengi and wondered if Yugin's success hadn't corrupted his friend as well.   
  


Once they reached their quarters, Frau, Hannah, and Anja promptly set to work falling asleep. Between time traveling, being captured by Ferengi, and their conversation with Captain Sisko, it had been a long day.

The next day the three discovered the joys of replicated scrambled eggs. "They just don't taste right," Frau muttered throughout the meal. Once through, though, she decided she would be content just to find a laundry room to wash her one outfit. She was wearing clothes fabricated by the station's systems, and they didn't agree with her, making her want to have her own clothes clean and on her body as soon as possible. She asked Anja and Hannah about it.

Hannah laughed. "I don't think there's a laundromat," she said. "You just put them in the station's automatic system, and it washes them for you." Anja agreed.

Frau thought of the special washing instructions for her outfit, grabbed it, and set off looking for the laundry room she knew had to be somewhere.   
  


Captain Picard had just been visited by Q. Like always, the Captain had tried to pry some information out of the annoying being, but Q had revealed nothing, except that which drew more questions than answers. Picard had asked how it was that Q had come to visit, and there were no disasters of any sort.

"Oh, don't get impatient, Jean-Luc," Q had said. "You'll see soon enough." After that, Q hadn't bothered to stay and tell what there was to see.   
  


Contrary to popular Trekkie opinion, Frau was able to find a laundry room in one of the nearly abandoned service hallways of Deep Space Nine.

"Guten Morgen," she said to the large black man with a furrowed brow that was also in the room.

"Guten Morgen," returned Worf. Evidently, the universal translator had established German as Frau's first language.

As she loaded her clothes into the washing machine, Frau asked, "Who are you?" The universal translator switched gears.

"I am Worf," the man stated.

"My name is Elizabeth Boggess, but you can call me Frau." the machine whirred as the wash cycle began. Frau was now in her element. She looked again at the man's forehead. Which alien was he?

Noticing Frau's questioning glance, Worf explained, "I am Klingon."

Frau glanced over, or rather, under his shoulder at the bundle of clothes he had just put in the dryer. Cling on?

"Because you don't use fabric softener?"   
  


Worf strode away from the laundry room, his warrior's tunic in hand. Even now the thought of Frau's unsuspecting pun made his already dark face redden. He knew that the woman had meant no harm, but she had unknowingly dented his honor. Imagine! The noble Klingon name defaced to a point where it was level with fabric softener. He shook the thought off, knowing it was nothing.

He turned into the corridor leading to his quarters. Once inside, he carefully tucked away his warrior's tunic and paused to get a glass of prune juice from the replicator before heading to work.

Halfway between his quarters on the _Defiant_ and Ops, an alert sounded. He hurried his steps so that he could help sooner.

Once at Ops he realized what had caused the commotion. On the viewscreen was the wormhole, standing open, but instead of its usual icy blue color, it was now a vivid tangerine. Beams of light shot out of it at all angles, apparently harmless, though DS9 had its shields up anyway. Dax worked frantically at her station, every once in a while telling Captain Sisko a new piece of data. Worf read through the numbers and Dax's explanations. She didn't know what was happening.

Worf manned his station, although he felt that most of the work to be done now was the science officer's. He checked his own sensor data. From his years at tactical, he surmised that the wormhole's dilation was of no immediate threat to the station. The alarms had now quieted. Everything rode now on Dax's calculations.

"Captain, I'm reading a slight temporal flux," she announced. "Wait. It just disappeared. The wormhole seems to be returning to its normal state."

All eyes watched as the wormhole slowly, but surely, closed.

Dax checked her sensor data again. "I'm not picking up any more anomalous readings."

Captain Sisko nodded, his expression grim. "It could be the Dominion," he said.

Dax frowned. "But how?"

Worf spoke up. "It could be the result of the test of a new weapon."

The Captain took in what they were saying, but he didn't really believe it. He thought about what Anja had told him. "Spies," he muttered under his breath.

"Captain?" said Dax.

The Captain shook his head. "Nothing." How could he explain it?

Worf grunted and turned back to his station. Usually in one of these unofficial brainstorming sessions everyone voiced their ideas, no matter how ridiculous. _Whatever the Captain thinks must at least have some grounds to it_, thought Worf, _or else he would have said it_. Captain Sisko was onto something.

Worf turned back to his task. Such speculation would have to wait. For now there were sensor records to review.   
  


When Frau returned to the room, Anja and Hannah were waiting by the door for her. "It's begun," Anja stated.

Frau seemed to understand. She threw her outfit on her bed, not even bothering to change back into it.

Together, the three headed toward Ops.   



	4. 4

> CHAPTER FOUR

  
Elizabeth Raquel Chen opened wide her eyes to cast off the sleep as quickly as possible. What task should she take up first that day? Then she remembered that it was a school day and that she had failed her history test the day before. This wouldn't be so bad, except that she was homeschooled   
and her mother taught her. With no way of hiding her grade, she was grounded. She threw her pillow over her head to muffle the day, hopelessly, for she had flung off all the sleepiness her first waking second.

At times like this that she hated being a morning person. She took her head out from under the pillow and got out of bed, less than eager to face the day.

She hopped into a forest green corduroy jumper and some matching leather shoes. Smoothing and brushing out her long black hair, she put a barrette in and stood back to examine her appearance. She decided she looked fine, so she went downstairs for breakfast. She fixed herself an egg, sitting down to eat.

She heard a beeping sort of noise in the next room and guessed its source.

"David, you know what Mom said. No Nintendo till after school."

"But I'm to the Klingon," complained a voice from the next room.

"David," Lizzie repeated, annoyed.

There was no reply. She stood and headed toward the family room, ready to take the controls from her brother by force, but halted midstep when she saw the TV screen melt into a vortex of color, shooting out orange beams of light in all directions. David, absent from the room, appeared on the TV,   
flying through the vortex! Lizzie took a deep breath and dove in after him.

The sensation of flying was exhilarating. Much better than school, Lizzie couldn't help thinking. Bright orange and green swirled around her as she shot forward into the unknown.

Suddenly, reality reassembled around her and she stood on solid ground next to David, who wore an expression of utter joy and confoundment on his face. As the vortex collapsed behind them, Lizzie pushed her brother back through, despite his screams of paradise lost. It was only then that she   
really took in her surroundings. She was on _Voyager_.   
  


Q hovered near the starship _Enterprise_, commanded by Captain James T. Kirk, the first ship to carry the well-known name which Jean-Luc's ship also sported, and the subject of the first series of "Star Trek," as the Earthers in the parallel timeline called it. These facts made it a fitting last link   
for the chain of events Q had set in motion. He had only to place the few atoms it took to create a temporal disturbance and wait a few days till the ship discovered it. And when they did, they were in for a big surprise.   
  


Captain Sisko requested that the three "time travelers," as they now referred to themselves, meet him on the _Defiant_. As they trod down the corridor on the way to the powerful ship, Hannah spoke.

"So that means he believes us?"

"No," answered Anja, "It doesn't. In fact, it may mean that he doesn't trust us at all and wants to keep us within his sight."

"What's not to trust? We told him the truth," replied Hannah.

"Truth or not, he doesn't know that," Anja pointed out, "So we have to prove it."

"Aha." No one picked up the conversation after her, so Hannah continued. "Does Captain Sisko know about your book?"

"He should," Frau put in, "if it was written in the past and this is the future."

"Actually," mused Anja, "I don't know. Normally I'd say no, but Sisko and the people of DS9 have a way of coming up with the most obscure data. For all I know, I could've published my story after we left. Of course, there's always the possibility of a parallel timeline."

"A parallel timeline?" questioned Frau.

"You don't read much science fiction, do you?" asked Hannah.

Frau shook her head as Anja explained. "A parallel timeline is created when two possible futures split to become two actual timelines, each parallel to the other. That is, they run on the same linear time scale. And they have the same people in it. To start out with, at least. What I'm thinking is that we've entered the future of a timeline parallel to ours. In our time, 'Star Trek' was just a science fiction TV show. In this timeline, it's a reality."

Frau nodded slowly and said, "I see."

Hannah quipped, "Thank you, Mr. Spock."

"Live long and prosper," returned Anja with the Vulcan salute. "Look, up there's corridor 21 Alpha. We're almost to the _Defiant_." And indeed they were. Just a turn, then another, and a step through the airlock, and they reached the _Defiant_, coming face to face with Captain Sisko and a couple of menacing-looking security guards.

"Welcome aboard the _Defiant_," Sisko began. "I'd like to trust you, but your unlikely prediction of the wormhole's recent activity have made me a bit suspicious. May I introduce you to Lieutenants DeWhit and Hunter? Don't try anything, because they'll be watching you very closely. Otherwise," his tone grew friendly again, "enjoy the ride."

"The bridge is this way," instructed Lieutenant Hunter, and gestured for the three time travelers to follow him.

"Well, so much for making our job easy," muttered Hannah under her breath.   
  


Lizzie paced up and down the corridor, wondering what to do. She could go directly to the Captain, but would that set her up to be assumed some sort of spy? One thing was for certain, though: she couldn't stay in that hallway forever. Eventually, someone would find her.

She did not regret pushing David back through the time warp. Being the type of Trekker that craved action and adventure, he would have by now taken charge, and most likely landed them both in the brig.

Lizzie pinched herself again, wondering if this wasn't just the most elaborate dream she'd ever dreamt. But that theory seemed unlikely, since she could think so clearly, and felt very aware of the world with all five of her senses. She also had a bit of a headache, which further dispelled the   
possibility of dreaming.

While she thought, the minutes ticked by, more slowly it seemed as they became more numerous. Finally, Lizzie couldn't stand it anymore and headed straight for a computer panel she had passed earlier. "Computer, locate Captain Janeway," she instructed.

"Captain Janeway is in her ready room," came the computer's droning reply. Lizzie nodded, if only to herself, and headed for a turbolift.

"Bridge," she directed as the doors closed behind her, growing apprehensive as the lift moved, but reminding herself that something must be done, only hoping it was the right thing. The lift stopped. It was now or never. The doors slid open, exposing the bridge and the Starfleet officers at their positions. Chakotay sat in the center chair, evidently in command at the moment.

Lizzie strode into the middle of the room, aware of the officers' questioning glances. Only Chakotay spoke.

"I don't recognize you," he stated. "You're not a part of the crew."

"I . . . I'd like to speak to Captain Janeway," Lizzie stammered.

"The Captain's off-duty right now. You can talk to me."

"Well, okay. No, I'm not a part of the crew. I'm from the past, actually, from earth. Somehow, I time-traveled here. I've been on the ship for about the past hour, wondering what to do. So finally I came here. You get my predicament." Lizzie stood still, it seemed like forever, waiting for a response.

Chakotay considered her for a moment and said, "Captain Janeway to the bridge."

In a matter of seconds the Captain emerged, heading towards Chakotay and Lizzie. "Hello. What's this?" she queried.

"Captain Janeway, I presume," Lizzie began. "I have already told--" she caught herself; an unsuspecting time traveler would not know Chakotay by name--"your duty officer why I am here. I seem to have found myself transported to your time. I am from earth of the late twentieth century,   
1997 to be exact. I'm assuming this would warrant your interest?" Lizzie bit her lip and raised her eyebrows in askance.

"Yes, indeed it does. Mr. Kim," said Janeway, turning, "see if you can detect any chronoton particles or other anomalous readings that would evidence recent time travel."

"Aye, Captain." He continued directly, having already scanned the ship. "There is a slight buildup of chronoton particles on deck six. From the sensor records, they would have reached peak intensity approximately fifty-six minutes ago."

"Thank you, Mr. Kim," said Janeway, then turned to Lizzie. "You'll be given some quarters, and try not to learn too much. We can't have you inventing anything before its time when you go back." She did not state that Lizzie's return was more likely an "if" than a "when."

Lizzie, however, was full aware of that fact, but couldn't help but smile at Janeway's final comment. After all, she was a Trekker. Didn't she know too much already?   
  


Frau watched in awe as the wormhole engulfed the starship _Defiant_, whirling blue static across the viewscreen.

"Great special effects, huh?" whispered Hannah. Frau just nodded.

"I always wanted to do this," said Anja, "but wait. The real show hasn't begun yet." As if on cue, several tendrils of blue light changed to green, then yellow, and on across the spectrum until there was a whole rainbow of visible light coming at the _Defiant_. For a split second it stayed that way, serene and dream-like, then it developed ripples that turned into waves, advancing until they broke on the _Defiant_. The ship lurched.

"The wormhole's losing its stability!" yelled Dax above the beating of the waves, which jarred the ship about like a cowboy on a bucking horse. "There's a rupture forming . . ."

A great white light engulfed the "Defiant," and all sound fell silent.


	5. 5

> CHAPTER FIVE

  
The planet had been another, highly unlikely, "just like earth" scenario. "I don't believe it," McCoy had said. "It seems impossible, but there it is."

It _was_ impossible, but Q enjoyed playing mind games with the human race, even before first contact between their two species. Now, for his final two cards to come into play, he had only to wait, for the first pair, not yet carrying much weight, already lay on the table. Together the four would be an unbeatable hand, in the human game of poker, a royal flush. Q enjoyed moments such as these.

Not far from the original "Enterprise," the way the Q fly, sat the starship _Voyager_, with crew ever anxious to return home. Now their chance would come.   
  


Tuvok focused on the mathematics of traversing galactic distances in one giant leap. In his spare time he took to this problem, knowing it was not his area of specialty, but enjoying the prospect of scientific unknown, working to make the impossible possible, the unattainable inevitable. His goal, as an explorer and as a Vulcan, was to seek knowledge, and during the past few months his knowledge of subspace mechanics had grown to rival even the Captain's, by training a science officer.

As he pondered, an idea snagged at the back of his mind, and he brought it out into the open for inspection. Finding no immediate faults, he took out a padd and pieced together equations, over an hour developing a theory as the connections in his mind solidified. Once finished, he decided he had   
best confer with Lieutenant Torres so that she could confirm his reasoning.

He had no trouble finding Torres, since she was on duty in engineering, and since he recalled her saying that the ship was functioning remarkably well and that nothing had gone "on the blink" lately, he decided he need not wait to share his findings.

On entering engineering, he identified Torres, who lounged at her console, distractedly studying some sort of readout. "Lieutenant," he announced, and she looked up. "I have a hypothesis I would like you to confirm." He handed her the padd with his equations.

She scanned it, then sat up straight as she read it more completely. Finally, she pressed the "pause" key, and her glance rocketed upward. "This is possible," she blurted, "for all I know. It's brilliant. How did you ever think of it?"

"That," replied Tuvok, "is the question."

Just then, an ensign Tuvok recognized as Gabi Quinn approached, looking a little nervous, and reported to Torres, "Sir, sorry to interrupt your conversation, but I thought you'd want to see this. A couple of minutes ago, my mind started wandering and this idea just came to me . . ." Her voice trailed   
off as she handed Torres a padd.

B'Elanna Torres compared the information contained by the two data padds she held: the equations, the stated theory, everything written on one identical to the other. She let her gaze travel back and forth between them, noting she would need to get to work right away, call a meeting with the   
Captain. Glancing down again, she realized she had lost track whose padd she held in which hand. She looked up at Tuvok and Ensign Quinn in confusion.

"Now which padd is whose?"   
  


Everything peaceful in the aftermath of the amazing show of light, the stars floated serenely in the velvety blackness of space, pinpricks of life supporting thousands of undiscovered cultures. Despite the tranquility, one couldn't help but feel that this was a frontier, the final frontier.

"These are the voyages of the starship _Enterprise_. Her mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations. To boldly go where no man has gone before!" Then the music started. Where it came from no one could tell, yet somehow all heard.

"What the . . ." Captain Benjamin Sisko stood sorely, having been thrown from his seat along with everyone else on the bridge, in a time none could remember. "Where are we?"

Anja sat up and leaned over to Frau and Hannah. "I like this part," she whispered.

Dax assumed her station and shook her head to get rid of the grogginess. "We're seventy-five light years from Bajor, in the Safrian system," she paused and took a breath as she saw the next readout, "in the year 2276. There's an object bearing 76.5 degrees, twenty thousand meters off the port bow."

"Can you get it on the viewscreen?" Commander Sisko seemed rather in awe of the whole situation. It didn't seem like him, Hannah thought, but then it did.

The viewscreen fizzled, and the stars slowly shimmered to show a starship, the _Enterprise_, the original wagon train to the stars.

"Hey," exclaimed Frau suddenly, "I recognize that. It's that spaceship off of 'Star Trek!'"

The moment was broken. Frau, enormously pleased that she had finally recognized something, vigorously related how she had watched "Star Trek" often in the past.

The music chose that moment to die out, while Frau expressed her desire to meet the crew of the original _Enterprise_ and ask for autographs.

"Activate cloaking device," commanded Captain Sisko, finally shaking off the effects of the time travel.

"Cloaking device operational," O'Brien responded.

"Now," Sisko began softly, carefully, turning in the direction of the time travelers. "I want to know everything you know."   
  


Lizzie became curious, despite Captain Janeway's warnings. It had been all she could do to restrain herself from totally devouring the ship's computers, instead restricting herself to relatively unimportant things, such as studying the unusual plant life on the planet of Cestus Three, or learning   
of new hairstyling techniques from the fashion magazines of the century. She had just decided she wanted to meet more of the people of _Voyager_ and was heading down to Neelix's cafe when she met someone she did not expect.

"Q?" Why was he here? Unless that explained how she had arrived.

"Who else?" he answered. "I was just going down to talk to your Captain."

"Why are you walking? Can't you just _whoosh_ yourself there?" Lizzie imitated the hand gesture Q used to make himself disappear.

"You have such a puny mind. You can't understand the pressures of being a Q. Exercise is, how shall I say this . . . entertaining."

"Ah, I see," noted Lizzie with a smile. "You wanted to stretch your legs."

"Exactly," returned Q, and then did a double take. "Did I just allow a human to understand me?" He looked sick. "I must be losing my touch."

Lizzie invented a dozen retorts, but kept silent. She thought back to a question that had come to mind a few moments ago.

"Yes," said Q.

"What?"

"Yes," Q repeated. "You were going to ask if I was the one who brought you here."

At the next intersection in the corridors, the two parted ways. Lizzie thought to wave goodbye, out of force of habit, but she was not surprised when Q went on his merry way, oblivious to all but himself.   
  


It was all taken care of. Tuvok and Torres had met with the senior staff, along with Ensign Quinn, for the discussion of how best to utilize their findings. There had not been much discussion on whether to use it or not, only a simple demonstration of what could be, and a pouring out of ideas   
on how to make what could be into what will be. For every obstacle they had run into, they had found a detour, and now it seemed there were no obstacles left.

They were going home. It was just a matter of reconfiguring the warp drive to a more efficient pattern and rigging the deflector dish to emit a spatial disruption to elasticize the space near them. Then they would cause a rupture in that area of space and connect it to the space-time of their   
destination and punch through to the other side.

They would, in essence, create their own wormhole. Tuvok entered the calculations into the engineering console, while Torres and Quinn made a final check of the warp drive. The Captain herself had donned her zero-g suit and helped prepare the deflector dish, returning to the bridge to wait for the go ahead from engineering.

Finally, Torres raised her head from a diagnostic screen and pronounced, "I think that does it." Tuvok nodded that he was finished, also. "Captain, we're all ready down here." Torres looked nervous, but Tuvok supposed that her anxiety was only natural. It was, however, most decidedly not logical.

Tuvok could hear the Captain's voice from the bridge, broadcast throughout the whole ship as she said, "Mr. Kim, engage." The whole ship lurched, and time blurred.


	6. 6

> CHAPTER SIX

  
"I wish I could explain it all to you," offered Anja. "It would be extremely difficult to do so, however, without . . . What the heck? There's no history to alter, just the future!"

"So let's change it. That's what the present is all about, isn't it?" asked Sisko.

"Well, if it wasn't so . . . plain weird, then I might think you'd actually believe me. Plus, what I tell you would have implications for eternity, or until time ends. I wouldn't want anybody from this universe to think that they were, well, merely characters on a TV show."

"TV?"

"Television," Dax chimed in. "An ancient form of entertainment that preceded our holodecks. The humans would watch a story acted out on a glowing panel. It was noninteractive until the early twenty-first century."

"Strange or not, I've probably seen stranger," intoned Sisko, returning to the conversation at hand.

"Well, that's just it. To us, you're a bunch of TV characters," admitted Anja regretfully.

"Good ones too," quipped Frau. "I used to vatch the old 'Star Trek.'"

"Which is that ship," added Hannah, pointing to the Enterprise on the viewscreen. "You're the third series, 'Deep Space Nine.' The second was 'The Next Generation.'"

"Which was based around the lives of the crew of the 'Enterprise-D,'" Anja continued. "And last but not least, 'Voyager,' the crew that got lost in the Delta Quadrant."

"That's ridiculous!" Sisko blurted.

"I told you that you wouldn't believe me."

"You did say that."

"So, what're you going to do with us now?" wondered Hannah in a quavering voice. "Lock us up like the crazies we feel like? This is as hard for us to accept as it is for you, in fact, harder, because you're used to stuff like temporal anomalies and breaking the laws of physics. To us, this is just an   
awfully vivid dream!"

"But a fun one at that," said Anja.

Frau nodded.

Just then, another ship emerged from the wormhole/time portal and fired an energy web over the _Defiant_, and almost as an afterthought, the _Enterprise_. Klaxons sounded the red alert, and Sisko gave a quick string of orders to his crew.

"Our weapons are blocked by the energy net," informed Dax. "We're sitting ducks."

"Oh, dear. I forgot that he was coming," moaned Anja.

"You knew?" Sisko's gaze was immediately upon her.

"Uh . . . oh, this is even harder to explain. I wrote a book, back in my timeline, and we're kind of . . . in it. I know how to get us out of this, if you'll let me open a channel to the captain of that ship. Trust me, Captain. It's the only way, unless you want to be sold to the highest bidder on the Ferengi black market."

Sisko paused for an infinite second, the muscles in his jaw working over the decision. Finally, he assented. "Open a comm channel." Aside, he warned Anja, "Don't try anything stupid."

Yugin's face appeared on the viewscreen, smiling, gloating over the prize fish he had netted. "I see you're ready to surrender, Captain." Then he noticed Anja, Hannah and Frau. "You're here. I suppose I've killed three birds with one stone instead of just two."

"Not quite, Yugin, but I'm willing to make a deal with you," Anja challenged.

"I don't think I could profit more from anything that you could offer me over what I already have."

"That's where you're wrong. You thought that I was a spy, but in truth I'm even more than that. I'm the author of this little adventure. So you would be wise to listen to me. Let the _Defiant_ and the _Enterprise_ go. A much greater opportunity for profit is yet to come. If you allow both of the ships that you have netted to proceed back through the wormhole, I will personally provide you with all the information your greedy heart desires about the immediate future, and also, as a side note, I know how to defeat your little snare, and I know your shield frequency. I created it. You think you can change it? I know what you'll change it to. I come from a universe where you are science fiction, and I am your writer. I know you, better than you know yourself."

Yugin's face, now pale and carefully controlled, abruptly vanished from the viewscreen.

"Did he buy you?" wondered Dax.

The energy net dissipated, and shipwide functions returned to normal. "Stand down from red alert," stated the Captain.

"Hail the _Enterprise_ and tell them that if they want to escape from our attacker, to follow us, and take us back into the wormhole," Anja ordered.

"Who gave you the authority to take over my ship?" Sisko queried, aggravated.

Anja allowed one eyebrow to quirk upward. "You did."   
  


Lizzie's mouth hung open as she stared out the mess hall windows, which contained, instead of the usual passing-by of stars, a vortex of brilliant orange hues, not unlike those which had transported her to _Voyager_ in the first place. She regained her composure enough to stride up to the counter behind which Neelix busily cooked a lunch of Terandian root stew and Rhasovian pie. "What's going on?" she demanded.

Neelix didn't even look up as he explained, "Haven't you heard? Mr. Tuvok has found a way home. Although he can't make his calculations precise enough to return to the Terran system, he does think that we may emerge somewhere in the vicinity of Bajor." He glanced up, then did a double take.   
"I don't recognize you."

"I'm not a part of the crew. I was brought to _Voyager _. . . just about the same way as you're going home."

"That's funny. The Captain never said that we had a visitor. Perhaps she was too caught up in the excitement of finding a way home that she forgot to introduce us. I'm Neelix," he greeted, extending his hand.

"Lizzie," she returned, accepting the handshake. Suddenly, an amount of comprehension dawned on her. "If Q brought me here, and I came here the same way that _Voyager_'s going home . . ." She turned abruptly to leave the mess hall.

"Wait!" said Neelix. "Where are you going?"

"To see Captain Janeway."

"She's awful busy right now," warned Neelix. "You wouldn't want to bother her."

"Oh, she'll take the time, when she hears what I have to say." With that, Lizzie set out toward the bridge.   
  


When Lizzie arrived on Deck One, Captain Sisko's face engulfed the viewscreen. "Welcome back to the Alpha Quadrant," he greeted. "Pylon two on ring C is free for docking. I have already notified Starfleet of your arrival."

"Thank you, Captain. If you don't mind, my crew would like to take some shore leave," Janeway requested.

"Of course. Whatever you need. Sisko out."

"Cool," whispered Lizzie, for a moment forgetting why she had come.

"Mister Paris, take us in," she directed, then turned to see Lizzie. "What was that?"

"Oh!" Lizzie jumped, startled into remembrance. "I came to tell you that I had a visit from Q. He's the one who brought me here, and when you were in the vortex, it looked exactly like the one I came through. I thought maybe . . ."

"That Q is responsible for our return to the Alpha Quadrant," Janeway realized. Her brow furrowed. "It doesn't make any sense. He refused to bring us home before. What made him change his mind?"

"I don't know," Lizzie said. "But we'll find out soon."


	7. 7

> CHAPTER SEVEN

  
"I've called this conference at the request of this young lady, who claims to be from the past and yet knows our future," Captain Sisko explained, gesturing towards Anja. "There's only one person missing."

"One Q, should we say," muttered Picard.

"Explain this again to me," requested Captain Kirk.

"Q is a being who has many somewhat supernatural powers," Sisko said. "Evidently, he decided to bring together the four of us, and this is relevant because in Anja's universe we are all from television series of the same timeline. She claims to have written a book in which all four of our crews   
come together somehow. The best explanation that I can offer is that Q read her story and decided that it should come to be."

"I didn't know that Q was involved until I got a chance to talk to Captain Janeway," added Anja. "I guess he isn't bound to one universe but can traverse between parallel timelines. He could be responsible for 'Star Trek' in my era."

Janeway nodded. "That makes sense. But why do it?"

Picard answered, "From my experiences with Q, he has nothing better to occupy his time than to meddle in the affairs of humanity. We're like laboratory rats to him. He wanted to know what would happen if he put all of us in the same experiment together."

"The Q seem to lead an incredibly boring existence," Janeway agreed. "Perhaps Q has to resort to such experimentation with humanity to occupy himself."

"So we're in his maze," Kirk mused. "What puzzle are we supposed to solve?"

"I can answer that," stated Anja.

"Don't bother," came a voice as Q appeared in their midst. "Ah, Mon Capitains!"

Frau, who was sitting in on the meeting, quipped, "You should learn German."

"Well, then, as you wish," replied Q. "Meine Kapitane!"

"What do you want, Q?" asked Picard.

"Simple, Jean-Luc. I want you to find this." A spinning sphere appeared in his hand, a miniature planet, and he clutched it and tossed it through the ceiling. "That planet is out there, Meine Kapitane, and you must find it! That is the puzzle, and here is the prize." A stack of cloth appeared in his   
hand. "Embroidered 'Star Trek' T-shirts, straight from Garak's tailor shop." He held one up so that all could see the design.

"Q, we really don't have time for this," sighed Captain Sisko, exasperated.

"Well, I'll tell you what you do have time for. He," Q pointed at Kirk, "will not return to his time, and neither will she, she, or she," he continued, pointing at Anja, Hannah and Frau each in turn. "And neither will your young visitor, Captain Janeway, unless you play by my rules."

"Okay, we're listening." Janeway spoke for all four captains assembled.

"The planet you are to find is called 'Shadah,' and no Starfleet officer has ever heard of it. However, it is not so far away, in fact, closer even than Starfleet itself! So let the games begin!" With that, Q vanished.

"He changed it," moaned Anja.

"What do you mean?" asked Sisko.

"He changed the planet we're supposed to find. It was supposed to be a planet from a Bajoran myth. Instead, he threw in some planet out of my imagination that's not even in the 'Star Trek' universe!"

"He said that the planet was closer than Starfleet itself," Kirk put in. "If you imagined it up, maybe he meant that since it's in you, that's why it's so nearby."

"Do you have any idea how to reach this planet?" questioned Sisko.

"Well, in its timeline, it's a planet colonized by humans in the early twenty-fourth century. It's a part of StarCommand, an alliance of earth and many colonized planets. It's further away from earth than Corelam, but in the opposite direction, and it's closer than Carratos and Beta Craig."

"Names of planets which do not exist in our universe," Picard stated flatly.

"Maybe . . ." began Janeway. "Who created 'Star Trek' in your universe?"

"Gene Roddenberry, but what does that have to do with anything?"

"If the idea for 'Star Trek' was implanted in his mind by Q from our universe, then perhaps he planted the idea for this new universe, where humankind has colonized and expanded to other planets instead of discovering extraterrestrial intelligence, in your mind. Perhaps he included a map."

"But I don't know exactly where they are," complained Anja, "just a general direction, and we can't just jump from one universe to another. It's impossible!"

"Then how did you get here from your universe?" inquired Janeway. "It's possible. We can use the same technology that brought us back to the Alpha Quadrant to find your universe and this new planet."

"Even if you don't know exactly where this planet is, maybe it's in your mind nonetheless, and you just haven't been able to access the information. Perhaps Doctor Bashir could find a way to access any data implanted by Q," suggested Sisko.

"You mean, dissect my brain?!" blurted Anja.

"By no means!" laughed Sisko. "It would simply be a nonintrusive scan."

"Perhaps a mind-meld would be more efficient," offered Kirk.

"Thanks, but no thanks," Anja replied. "Scans are enough for me."   
  


Julian Bashir frowned as he studied the trillions of complex neural pathways that composed the miraculous organ of the brain, containing more information than one could possibly read in a lifetime. He was faced with the decision of which messages to decipher, a more than daunting task, even with his genetically enhanced intelligence. Several parts of this brain were in complete, active use, and he discarded these segments of conscious thought, focusing on the unconscious, but just being realized.

Anja stared, fascinated, over the Doctor's shoulder at the multitude of displays mapping her brain function. "So you can, like, read my mind?"

"In a matter of speaking," Bashir responded.

"How do you know where to look?"

"I don't." His hands dancing over the control panels, Bashir scrolled the information by so quickly that it seemed blurred.

"Well, Q wouldn't make it entirely impossible. He should still follow the basic philosophy of my story, shouldn't he? I mean, the only reason he changed the planet is 'cause I already knew how to find it. It wouldn't be a puzzle if someone already knew the answer."

"I suppose it wouldn't. So what is this philosophy that you're so sure he has to follow?" asked Bashir distractedly.

"To every complicated problem there is a simple solution. Think about it. There must be some way to narrow down the search; it's too complex."

"How, then, do you suggest we do that?"

"I don't know. Hey, wait a minute! The only reason I don't know exactly where to find Shadah is because I haven't created its location yet. So, if I make up some coordinates, it should be there!"

"It can't hurt to try," sighed Bashir, finally looking up. "I could read your brain for days and still get no further than your REM files."

"My what?"

"Dreams."

"Oh, I have the weirdest dreams . . ."

Bashir cut her off. "I can bet."

Anja scowled.


	8. 8

> CHAPTER EIGHT

  
Aboard the _USS Voyager_, the skeleton crew, which had assembled for their rather unusual and ludicrous mission, made the final preparations for departure. Kathryn Janeway had been given command of this mission, since it was her ship that had been fitted for the task. Sisko, Picard and Kirk all three tagged along, with Worf at tactical, Tom Paris at the helm, Data at navigation, and Jadzia Dax sharing the science station with Spock. A total of three engineers and two doctors occupied engineering and sickbay, the holographic Doctor and Julian Bashir cooperating on the research topic of the effect of parallel universes on creativity, while B'Elanna Torres, Geordi La Forge, and Miles O'Brien ran diagnostic after diagnostic on the warp core. Montgomery Scott, Captain Kirk's chief engineer, had skipped out on the occasion to visit himself, having discovered that he was still alive   
after a long eighty years.

Anja had asked Captain Janeway to meet the "time traveler" she had mentioned, and was surprised to find that it was Lizzie, another of her good friends. "This is just getting stranger and stranger," Lizzie had announced, and Anja agreed.

Now Anja sat, eyes shut tightly, ideas whirling about in her head. Only one hour ago she had handed the fictional coordinates of the fictional planet to Captain Janeway, and since then many doubts had crossed her mind. What if she was wrong? What if she could not create this universe anymore, once she found out that it existed? But she hammered the coordinates into her memory, somewhat certain that if she convinced herself, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that Shadah was where she said it was, then it would be there.

Tuvok strode up beside her. "You are agitated," he stated matter-of-factly.

"The success of this mission depends upon my ability to create . . . not fiction, but reality. It's strange."

"I myself am somewhat disturbed as to the nature of our quest," Tuvok replied. "It is . . . disconcerting to think that our wildest imaginings may not be pure fantasy, but rather reality, somewhere else." His serene Vulcan face betrayed no emotion, but Anja could tell from the content of his statement that he was bothered by their situation as much as any human would be, realizing that even wakefulness could not protect him from his dreams.

"What we create in our minds must be positive," Anja agreed. "For it is someone else's reality."

Tuvok was silent for a long moment, and Anja thought she saw a flicker of respect flash in his eyes. "Admirable," he commented, lifting an eyebrow.

"We're ready, Captain," came Torres' voice over the comm channel.

Janeway stood, as if ready to boldly face this new frontier. "Mr. Paris," she instructed, "engage."

In a moment Deep Space Nine was gone, and only _Voyager_ and the stars remained.   
  


Once again the familiar vortex of brilliant swirling orange engulfed the viewscreen, and Lizzie wondered why Q couldn't have chosen a better color to pound into their faces. Blue would be pretty, green would be alien, purple exotic, but the foamy orange of the vortex reminded her too much of melted orange sherbert. However, the color soon dissipated as a tiny, blue-green sphere replaced the vortex.

"Magnify," commanded Janeway, and as the planet loomed larger on the viewscreen, her eyes widened in awe at the bluest azure that colored the oceans, and the emerald-green that intermingled with it to form continents, islands, and great sheets of algae thick enough to build a city upon.

"Boy, do you have a good imagination," breathed Hannah.

"Now I'll know what to plan for my next vacation," stated Frau happily. Her comment brought the crew back to the present with a dozen or so chuckles, and each officer turned back to his or her work.

"From information gathered by our scans," informed Spock, "there are three thousand lifeforms on the surface, meaning the planet was most likely colonized around twenty years ago."

"We're here. Now what do we do?" invited Kirk.

"Simple," said Anja. "Make first contact. These people meet all your requirements. They're more than warp capable, and in this timeline, earth has had a centralized government for several hundred years. But no one in this universe has ever seen an extraterrestrial, and most people have given up hope in any intelligent life other than humans."

"Wouldn't that pose a risk?" asked Picard. "This universe was created, it seems, to be without extraterrestrial intelligence. Shouldn't we let them live out their reality without subjecting them to a fantasy which might create false hopes and cause great disappointment?"

"You forget, Captain," Anja reminded him, "that this universe was created by me. I know those people down there," she stated, pointing, "and I know that they won't ever give up hope. I want to give them a sign, show them that they're not hoping in vain."

"And you're forgetting that this universe was merely implanted in your mind by Q," argued Picard. "You didn't create it. You discovered it, and that doesn't give you the right to determine their course of their history."

Stung, Anja scowled into the viewscreen, certain that she, of all people, should know what was best for those people. "Why did Q send us here, then? To make us discover that we could traverse dimensions? Sure, that would be a great scientific discovery, but it's a shallow one at that. Q's not   
interested in our technology, he's interested in our development as individuals. That's why he let us survive after Farpoint. If we don't talk to the Shadan colonists, we came here for nothing."

"It would be like Q to teach us such a lesson," agreed Picard slowly.

Janeway smiled. "Then it's settled. Prepare to make first contact."   
  


The away team assembled composed of the four captains and time travelers, eight in all, each thrilled at the prospect of making first contact not just with a new race, but with a new dimension. "Think about it," Janeway mused. "This is what we'd be if it weren't for the Vulcans."

"And the Andorians, and the Klingons, and the Tellarites, and so on," Hannah reminded her.

"You should have been born in the twenty-fourth century," Janeway complimented her.

The away team assembled in a city square to the amazement of every Shadan in the vicinity. Janeway strode up to a tall, middle-aged man, with sharp, well-defined, dark-brown features. "Excuse me," she began. "Can you tell me where I can find someone in charge here?"

"Sure." He blinked. "Just go down Main Street till you reach the StarCommand building. It's right beside the McDonald's. You can't miss it."

Frau wrinkled her nose. "They still have McDonald's? I can't believe it."

"Of all the fast-food chains, it would be the one," stated Lizzie.

"Well, crew, shall we go?" queried Janeway. The group followed her down Main Street.   
  


Anja recognized the admiral sorting papers behind her desk immediately, even though she'd never seen her or even really thought about what she would look like. "Rachel Stoner," she gasped.

Admiral Stoner spun in her chair to face the sound of her name and raised an eyebrow in confusion when she saw Anja and her seven other guests. "You may call me Admiral Stoner," she corrected Anja. "Who are you? You aren't colonists."

Anja smiled sheepishly and slipped behind Captain Janeway, who introduced, "I'm Captain Kathryn Janeway from the United Federation of Planets."

Stoner frowned. "Is that what the Nasrardians are calling themselves now?"

"Uh, no." Janeway looked behind her to catch the reassuring glances of the other captains. "Admiral Stoner, you may find this hard to believe, but we come from a universe parallel to yours, and we represent thousands of worlds, not just humans."

"You're right," Stoner commented. "I do find that hard to believe."

"Admiral," Anja broke in, "we've come an awful long way to tell you this. We want to show you that there is life out there, other than humanity. I know there's not much evidence . . ."

"Evidence!" Picard interjected. "Scan our temporal signatures. They should be out of phase with the rest of your universe."

Stoner rolled her eyes, a dull blue-gray that matched her uniform. "I'll humor you," she said, producing a small scanning device. She seemed distracted as she began gathering data, but soon she sat straight and rigid in her seat, and her head popped up. "You're right."

Janeway smiled agreeably. "We have a vessel in orbit. You should be able to detect it. Perhaps you'd like to join us onboard?"

"Well," Admiral Stoner chuckled, "I'll have to notify the planetary supervisor of your presence, and we can work things out from there." She bounced up out of her seat, despite her sixty-plus years and skipped out of her room, the expression on her face as giddy as a schoolgirl's.

"See?" Anja grinned, cocking her head at Captain Picard.

Picard, however, grumbled, "I didn't know Q could be so caring."


	9. 9

> CHAPTER NINE   


"Our universe awaits, and to home we must go," mused Kirk after all the Shadan representatives had left _Voyager_.

"Too bad they didn't get to try Klingon food," joked Anja. "Too bad I didn't get to try Klingon food."

"Would you like to? I can arrange it," Janeway offered.

"Thanks, but no thanks," said Anja. Lizzie, Hannah and Frau nodded their agreement. "That's something I'm content to leave purely to my imagination."

As the vortex formed on the viewscreen, Hannah wondered, "Will Q really give us those 'Star Trek' T-shirts?"

"If he does," Data perked up, "I can use mine as a bed for Spot."

"I never understood why you named your cat Spot," Lizzie prodded. "He doesn't even have any spots."

"It is a common human pet name," Data explained.

"Part of his quest to become more human," commented Picard.

"Precisely," added Data.

"A cat named Spot," Frau repeated. "You should have named him Schnurrbart."

"Interesting," replied Data, "the German word for 'moustache.' Perhaps a canine would be more fitted to that name."

"And Spot's a . . . cat's name?" asked Lizzie slowly.

Data did not answer.

Time passed quickly on their return voyage, each quietly jubilant at the prospect given them that nothing was impossible, and that they would soon be home. Once Deep Space Nine came into view, everyone anxiously wondered when Q would appear and send them their separate ways. Captain Janeway, especially, felt nervous.

"It's too easy," she kept repeating to herself. "I anticipated a lifetime of traveling homeward. Would Q make it as simple as this?"

The answer to this Anja kept to herself, knowing all too well that soon the Captain would wake up, in the Delta Quadrant, everything having been a dream to her, and blurry enough so that she would not remember how to reproduce the technology that brought home within her grasp. It would be like this for every participant in their odyssey, and very soon they would forget about creating artificial wormholes, deeming the feat impossible for the human mind. The computers, of course, would show no record that the events of the past few days had, in fact, occurred, and the only people who would remember the reality of it would be those shortchanged by the experience, Yugin, Qor and Quark.

As the docking clamps sealed and the airlock hissed open, the company hurried to the Promenade, not having been told, but somehow knowing that this was where they were supposed to go. Quark, it seemed, had been busy, for all his counters were covered with every sort of pie, cake, fruit, pudding, and any other food that one could imagine. He conversed with a taller, brown-headed man that everyone, all at once, recognized as Q. In a second, they were upon him, demanding.

"Send us back to our time! We did what you wanted."

"Let _Voyager_ remain in the Alpha Quadrant."

"Send these people home! It's about time."

Q sat through all of this, silent as one who is superior and knows it, letting their statements bounce off of him like Jell-O. "Be patient," he finally chided.

"Patient indeed!" shouted someone from Janeway's crew, sending a creme pie flying through the air at Q, who disappeared before impact, allowing it to continue on its trajectory right into Data's face. The android assessed the situation, wiping strawberry creme from his eyes, and decided that the most human thing to do would be to return fire.

Thus, the great four-front, four-crew food fight began in Quark's bar, which had been stocked just for the occasion. The four time travelers, who had paused just long enough to give each of their favorite characters a pie in the face, ducked and dodged their way towards a door of shining orange light, which they understood was intended for their return trip. They hated to wave good-by, but each realized that they could survive with simply a TV episode of "Star Trek," while a mere television episode of their homes would never do. With only slight hesitation, they stepped through the portal, one at a time, Hannah first, then Frau, Lizzie and finally Anja, who paused for a long time after Lizzie disappeared into the orangeness to drink in as much of the dream come to life as possible before finally taking the plunge.   
  


Anja jerked awake to find herself in German class, listening to one of Frau's period-long tales of her life experience. However, she soon recognized the story as the one they had just been through, and she saw that Frau, as well as Hannah and even herself, when she paused to look down at what she wore, sported identical "Star Trek" T-shirts, bearing an uncanny resemblance to something from a dream.

It had not been a dream, of this she felt certain, but henceforth she would have to treat it as such, for no one would believe the truth. She didn't mind, though, realizing that even dreams were reality, sometimes.   


>   
EPILOGUE

  
Q placed his deck of cards, slowly, facedown on the table. He sat enthroned within the crescent of earth's moon, observing, yet again, the many fascinating mortals that occupied the blue-green planet's surface. Again, something caught his eye.

"I suppose I mustn't let boredom get the better of me," he reasoned to himself, forming a plan to create yet another diversion from the eternity of monotony in which he lived. In a moment he was off to Hollywood, to inspire another universe into existence.   
  
  


THE END?


End file.
